Mike Lincoln wrote:

[...] I'm missing /dev entires for most usb devices, I get the impression there must be a deb for this ?

I have the fstab line none /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs defaults 0 0

Maybe that helps you? It's not devfs (yet), so the devices are in /proc/bus/usb I guess.

Is there a good website/book that is aimed at experienced users who wish to migrate from other distributions to Debian?

You've seen the produce of the "Debian Documentation Project"? Another handy site for keeping up to date is http://www.debianplanet.org/ Other than that and the usual mailing lists etc, I'm not sure what to suggest.